Label consistency for image analysis

ABSTRACT

Systems and techniques are disclosed for labeling objects within an image. The objects may be labeled by selecting an option from a plurality of options such that each option is a potential label for the object. An option may have an option score associated with. Additionally, a relation score may be calculated for a first option and a second option corresponding to a second object in an image. The relation score may be based on a frequency, probability, or observance corresponding to the co-occurrence of text associated with the first option and the second option in a text corpus such as the World Wide Web. An option may be selected as a label for an object based on a global score calculated based at least on an option score and relation score associated with the option.

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

This application is a divisional application of, and claims priority to,U.S. patent application Ser. No. 14/135,816, titled “LABEL CONSISTENCYFOR IMAGE ANALYSIS,” filed on Dec. 20, 2013. The disclosure of theforegoing application is incorporated herein by reference in itsentirety for all purposes.

BACKGROUND

Some techniques for performing computer vision tasks such as imageobject recognition use a trained machine learning model. The modeltypically is trained based upon the attributes that belong to eachobject in an image, such as color, curves, and the like, by providingthe model with labeled training data. Based on the labeled trainingdata, the model may learn that, for example, a grey object that iscurved on one end and contains a trunk-like shape on the other end ismost likely an elephant. The trained model is then provided withnon-labeled images, in which the model attempts to identify and labelobjects based on the prior training.

BRIEF SUMMARY

According to implementations of the disclosed subject matter, an option(e.g., a potential label for an object) for a first object in an imagemay be received and may be an option from multiple options correspondingto the first object. An option for a second object in the image may alsobe received and may be an option from multiple options corresponding tothe second object. A relation score between the first option and thesecond option may be generated based on a co-occurrence model The optionfor the first object may be designated as a label for the first objectbased on solving a global optimization problem utilizing at least therelation score. The co-occurrence model may be trained using a textcorpus such as the World Wide Web. The relation score may be determinedbased on the frequency at which text associated with the first optionand the second option co-occur.

According to implementations of the disclosed subject matter, a firstoption for a first object in an image may be received and may be anoption from multiple options corresponding to the first object. A secondoption for the first object may also be received and may also be anoption from multiple options corresponding to the first object. Acontrol label may also be received and may correspond to a second objectin the image. A first relation score between the first option and thecontrol label may be generated based on a co-occurrence model.Similarly, a second relation score between the second option and thecontrol label may be generated based on the co-occurrence model. It maybe determined that the first relation score exceeds the second relationscore and, based on the determination, the first option may be selectedas a label for the first object in the image.

According to implementations of the disclosed subject matter, a firstoption may be received for a first a first patch within an image. Asecond option for a second patch within the image may also be received.A first option score for the first patch may be generated and a firstrelation score may be generated based on the consistency between thefirst option and the second option. A first global score may begenerated for the first patch based on the first option score and thefirst relation score. Further, a third option for the first patch withinthe image may be received and a second option sore may be generated forthe first patch. A second relation score may be generated based on theconsistency between the third option and the second option and a secondglobal score for the first patch may be generated based on the thirdoption score and the second relation score. The first global score andsecond global score may be compared and an option may be designated as alabel for the first object in the image based on the comparison.

Systems and/or computer readable medium, as disclosed herein, may beconfigured to receive an option for a first object in an image and maybe an option from multiple options corresponding to the first object. Anoption for a second object in the image may also be received and may bean option from multiple options corresponding to the second object. Arelation score between the first option and the second option may begenerated based on a co-occurrence model. The option for the firstobject may be designated as a label for the first object based onsolving a global optimization problem utilizing at least the relationscore. The co-occurrence model may be trained using a text corpus suchas the World Wide Web. The relation score may be determined based on thefrequency at which text associated with the first option and the secondoption co-occur.

Systems and/or computer readable medium, as disclosed herein, may beconfigured to receive a first option for a first object in an image, theoption may be an option from multiple options corresponding to the firstobject. A second option for the first object may also be received andmay also be an option from multiple options corresponding to the firstobject. A control label may also be received and may correspond to asecond object in the image. A first relation score between the firstoption and the control label may be generated based on a co-occurrencemodel. Similarly, a second relation score between the second option andthe control label may be generated based on the co-occurrence model. Itmay be determined that the first relation score exceeds the secondrelation score and, based on the determination, the first option may beselected as a label for the first object in the image.

Systems and/or computer readable medium, as disclosed herein, may beconfigured to receive a first option for a first a first patch within animage. A second option for a second patch within the image may also bereceived. A first option score for the first patch may be generated anda first relation score may be generated based on the consistency betweenthe first option and the second option. A first global score may begenerated for the first patch based on the first option score and thefirst relation score. Further, a third option for the first patch withinthe image may be received and a second option sore may be generated forthe first patch. A second relation score may be generated based on theconsistency between the third option and the second option and a secondglobal score for the first patch may be generated based on the thirdoption score and the second relation score. The first global score andsecond global score may be compared and an option may be designated as alabel for the first object in the image based on the comparison.

Systems and techniques according to the present disclosure enablelabeling objects within an image based on context relevant relationsbetween objects that are established using a text corpus. Additionalcharacteristics, advantages, and implementations of the disclosedsubject matter may be set forth or apparent from consideration of thefollowing detailed description, drawings, and claims. Moreover, it is tobe understood that both the foregoing summary and the following detaileddescription include examples and are intended to provide furtherexplanation without limiting the scope of the claims.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

The accompanying drawings, which are included to provide a furtherunderstanding of the disclosed subject matter, are incorporated in andconstitute a part of this specification. The drawings also illustrateimplementations of the disclosed subject matter and together with thedetailed description serve to explain the principles of implementationsof the disclosed subject matter. No attempt is made to show structuraldetails in more detail than may be necessary for a fundamentalunderstanding of the disclosed subject matter and various ways in whichit may be practiced.

FIG. 1 shows a computer according to an implementation of the disclosedsubject matter.

FIG. 2 shows a network configuration according to an implementation ofthe disclosed subject matter.

FIG. 3 shows an example process of labeling an object, according to animplementation of the disclosed subject matter.

FIG. 4 shows another example process of labeling an object, according toan implementation of the disclosed subject matter.

FIG. 5 shows an example illustration of a labeled object, according toan implementation of the disclosed subject matter.

FIG. 6a shows an example illustration of an image, according to animplementation of the disclosed subject matter.

FIG. 6b shows an example illustration options for objects in an image,according to an implementation of the disclosed subject matter.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

Techniques and systems described herein can be applied to generatelabels that identify objects within an image. Typical object recognitionand labeling systems may experience problems identifying objects withinan image due to various factors such as a limited training set, animprecise recognition model, limited availability of resources for useby the model, or the like. As described herein, objects recognitionand/or localization may be improved by utilizing contextual informationduring training and/or operation of a learned object identificationmodel. Contextual information may be utilized by validating that two ormore identified objects within an image are in fact likely to be presentin the same image. The validation may be conducted based on whether textcorresponding to the two or more objects co-occurs in a text corpus suchas documents on the World Wide Web. As a specific example, it may becontextually invalid to expect that an image will contain an elephant inthe middle of an ocean. Techniques described herein may label objects inimages based both on the object recognition as well as contextualvalidation via text co-occurrence detection, and may provide techniquesfor producing trained machine learning systems that identify and/orgenerate such labels. A label that identifies an object in an image maybe used for one or more applications such as to identify all or part ofthe image, to tag the image, to retrieve the image, or the like. As aspecific example, a user may input a search query into a search engine.The search engine may provide one or more images as a result of thesearch query. The one or more images may be selected based on a matchbetween the search query and object labels corresponding to objectscontained in the images.

According to implementations of the disclosed subject matter, multiplepotential or proposed labels, referred to herein as options, may begenerated and/or received for one or more objects in an image. Forexample, an image patch labeler as disclosed herein may receive anarbitrary patch of an image and provide options scores for options thatdescribe the image patch. Generally, an image patch may encompass one ormore objects within the image, and a patch may overlap one or more otherpatches from the same image.

According to an implementation, a machine patch labeler may use atrained machine learning model that can be applied to data extractedfrom an image, such as an object within the image and one or moreoptions may be generated based on applying the machine learned model tothe data extracted from the image. As an illustrative example, as shownin FIG. 5, an image may contain multiple objects (e.g., the worktop,sink, etc.). For a single object, multiple options may be generatedand/or scored by any applicable technique such as edge detection, primalsketch, recognition by parts (e.g., generalized cylinders, geons, etc.),edge matching, divide-and-conquer search, greyscale matching, gradientmatching, histograms of receptive field responses, applying a modelbase,or the like. Continuing the example, a plurality of options may begenerated for object 510 within the image 500. The options may include‘worktop’, ‘countertop’, ‘granite’, and ‘ice slab’. The options may beranked by a likelihood that the option corresponds to the object in theimage. Alternatively or in addition, an option score threshold may begenerated for a group of options, and options that receive an optionscore below the threshold may be eliminated as potential optionscorresponding to the object.

According to implementations of the disclosed subject matter, a corpus,such as text found on the World Wide Web may be analyzed and data may begathered regarding co-occurring text as described in further detailherein. A co-occurrence may be any applicable co-occurrence such asadjacent words or terms, two or more words or terms appearing within agiven number of words or area, two or more words or terms appearing inthe same sentence, two or more words or terms appearing in the sameparagraph, two or more words or terms appearing in the same page, two ormore words or terms appearing in the same document, or the like. As anexample, the sentence “President Obama may feed the national dolphin onSaturday” contains a co-occurrence of ‘dolphin’ and ‘Obama’ in the samesentence, paragraph, and document and does not contain a co-occurrenceof the two adjacent to each other. A co-occurrence may be predefined asadjacent words or terms, two or more words or terms appearing within agiven number of words or area, two or more words or terms appearing inthe same sentence, two or more words or terms appearing in the sameparagraph, two or more words or terms appearing in the same page, two ormore words or terms appearing in the same document, or the like. Whetheror not a particular arrangement of terms is considered a co-occurrence,or the importance given to a co-occurrence, may be based on weightsassigned to different types of co-occurrence. As an example of a weightbased co-occurrence, a co-occurrence of adjacent words may receive ahigher weight than a co-occurrence of two words that are within the sameparagraph as each other but are not immediately adjacent within asentence.

A co-occurrence model may be generated based on the co-occurrence dataand/or additional analysis of that data. The data may be any applicabledata related to text and co-occurring text, such as the number of timestwo or more words occur next to or near each other, the proximity ofco-occurring words, the frequency of co-occurrence, or the like. As anexample, data may be gathered for the number of times the nouns‘dolphin’ and ‘ocean’ co-occur as well as the number of times the nouns‘dolphin’ and ‘Obama’ co-occur. Based on typical use of these terms, itmay be expected that the number of times ‘dolphin’ and ‘ocean’ co-occuris likely to be higher than the number of times ‘dolphin’ and ‘Obama’co-occur.

According to implementations of the disclosed subject matter, a relationscore may be generated for two or more words or terms. The relationscore can be based on the detected co-occurrence within a text corpus,the co-occurrence corresponding to text associated with objects in animage. A relation score may be simply a count of the number of times orfrequency of how often two or more words or terms co-occur.Alternatively or in addition, the relation score may be based onweighted co-occurrence such that a first type of co-occurrence mayresult in a higher score than a second type of co-occurrence aspreviously described. As a specific example, a same sentenceco-occurrence may correspond to a 2× weight such that if two words J andK are within a common sentence 5000 different times, then the relationscore may be calculated by multiplying 5000 by 2 to generate 10,000. Anadjacent co-occurrence may correspond to a 3× weight such that if twodifferent words M and N are next to each other 4000 different times,then the relation score may be calculated by multiplying 4000 by 3 togenerate 12,000. Accordingly, although the number of times that M and Nare adjacent to each other is lower than the number of times J and Kappear in the same sentence, the adjacent co-occurrences are given ahigher weight and results in a higher value to base the relation scoreon. The relation score may be the weighted value of co-occurrencesthemselves or may be generated based on the weighted values. As anexample, the relation score for a pair of words may be generated basedon the weighted co-occurrence score for the words divided by the highestweighted co-occurrence score for any pair of words. It will beunderstood that the weights for each co-occurrence score may bedependent on a given image and may be a result of the optimizationproblem for each image.

As an example of generating a relation score, a probability of observingtwo options, i and j in the same image may be determined by analyzing asample of documents, such as documents harvested from the World WideWeb, a standardized text corpus, or other source. The specific number ofdocuments used may vary depending upon the availability of documentsand/or processing resources, the extent and/or accuracy desired in aparticular context or for a particular word or type of word, or anyother metric. In some cases, millions, billions, tens of billions, ormore documents may be used, and in general it may be preferable toanalyze a higher number of documents. For each document, every possiblesub-sequence of consecutive words of a given length may be examined. Thenumber of times each option was observed along with the number ofco-occurrences of label-pairs within each consecutive window may becounted. Estimates for the point-wise mutual information (i.e., ameasure of the association between the options) s_(i,j) may becalculated using:

$s_{i,j} = {\log \left( \frac{p\left( {i,j} \right)}{{p(i)}{p(j)}} \right)}$

where p(i, j) and p(i) are the normalized counts for the number of timeseach option was observed along with the number of co-occurrences ofoption-pairs within each consecutive fixed-length window. All pairswhose co-occurrence count is below a co-occurrence threshold may bediscarded and, thus, relation scores S_(i,j) may be generated based on:

$S_{i,j} = \left\{ {\begin{matrix}{\frac{1}{1 + {\exp \left( {- s_{i,j}} \right)}},} & {{{if}\mspace{14mu} s_{i,j}} > 0} \\0 & {otherwise}\end{matrix}.} \right.$

Only the pairs whose point-wise mutual information is positive, whichcorresponds to option-pairs which tend to appear together, may beapplied to generate a relation score.

According to an implementation of the disclosed subject matter, as shownin FIG. 3, an object in an image may be recognized and a first optioncorresponding to the object in the image may be received, at 310. Asecond object may be recognized and a second option corresponding to thesecond object in the image may be received, at 320. The first option andthe second option may be paired and, as disclosed herein, a relationscore may be generated for the first and second option, at 330. Therelation score may be based on weighted co-occurrences of the first andsecond option, as disclosed herein. A co-occurrence threshold may bepredetermined such that a relation score below the co-occurrencethreshold indicates a low likelihood that two options co-occur within animage. As a specific example, if a co-occurrence threshold is 0.7 andthe relation score for a pair of words, ‘dolphin’ and ‘Obama’ is 0.6then it may be determined that an object corresponding to ‘dolphin’ andone corresponding to ‘Obama’ are not likely to occur in the same image.Alternatively, a relation score that meets or exceeds a co-occurrencethreshold may correspond to a high likelihood that the two optionsco-occur within an image. As a specific example, if a co-occurrencethreshold is 0.7 and the relation score for a pair of words, ‘dolphin’and ‘ocean’ is 0.94, then it may be determined that an objectcorresponding to ‘dolphin’ and one corresponding to ‘ocean’ are likelyto be in the same image. Accordingly, a determination may be made, at340, of whether a relation score exceeds a co-occurrence threshold and,if the relation score exceeds the co-occurrence threshold then an optionmay be applied as a label for a corresponding object, at 350.Alternatively, the calculated relation score may be utilized whensolving global optimization problem, as disclosed herein. The relationscore may be one of multiple components associated with solving theglobal optimization problem.

The contextual relation between multiple options corresponding tomultiple objects in an image may be analyzed to determine the likelihoodthat the multiple objects are present in the image. Essentially, themultiple options corresponding to multiple objects may be identified byan image patch labeler and an option score may be calculated for each ofthe multiple options. The multiple options may be contextually validated(or invalidated) by a relation score that corresponds to a probabilityor observance of two or more of the options occurring together within atext corpus. As disclosed herein, a global score may be calculated andmay be based at least on an option score as well as a relation score.The global score may be directly correlated to both the option score andthe relation score such that a higher options score and/or a higherrelation score may result in a higher global score. Accordingly, even ifan option does not receive a high relation score, the correspondingobject may be labeled as the option if a high option score results in aglobal score above an applicable threshold. As an example, a globalthreshold may be 95 such that the global score is a simple addition ofan option score and a relation score corresponding to an option.Accordingly, if an option, elephant, is generated for an object withinan image and the option score for the option, elephant, is 96, then theoption may be applied as a label for the corresponding object regardlessof what the relation score is.

According to an implementation of the disclosed subject matter, as shownin FIG. 4, a first option may be receive for a first object in an imageat 410. A second option for the same object in the same image may alsobe received at 420. At 430, a control label for a second object in thesame image may be received. A control label may correspond to a secondobject in the image and may either be an option with a high option scoreor may be an established label for the second object. At 440, a firstrelation score for the first option and the control label may begenerated and, at 450, a second relation score for the second option andthe control label may be generated. A determination may be made as towhich relation score (i.e., for the first option and control label orfor the second option and control label) is higher, at 460. The optionthat corresponds to the higher relation score may be applied as a labelfor the first object, at 470.

In an illustrative example, a first image may contain an unlabeledobject as well as an object labeled as ‘dinner plate’. Optical objectrecognition may provide two options corresponding to the unlabeledobject: ‘knife’ and ‘pen’. A relation score can be generated for theterms ‘knife’ and ‘dinner plate’. Additionally, a relation score can begenerated for the terms ‘pen’ and ‘dinner plate’. The relation score for‘knife’ and ‘dinner plate’ may be 96, and the relation score for ‘pen’and ‘dinner plate’ may be 14. Accordingly, the unlabeled object may belabeled as a knife based on the higher relation score between the word‘knife’ and the label ‘dinner plate’. Here, the label for the unlabeledobject is selected based on the co-occurrence of the words associatedwith the options for the unlabeled object and a labeled second objectwithin the image.

According to an implementation of the disclosed subject matter, an imagepatch labeler may generate a plurality of options corresponding to aplurality of objects in an image. A single object may have a pluralityof options associated with the object and the plurality of options maybe selected based on high option scores. An optimization solution pathmay be developed to select a small subset of the options that have ahigh option score based on the image patch labeler and also have a highrelation score based on a co-occurrence model. The solution path may bean integer programming path and may be Non-deterministic Polynomial-timehard. However, the analysis may be relaxed to a convex optimizationproblem with box constraints. Based on the relaxation, an efficientalgorithm may be derived and may alternate between gradient descent andprojection to a feasible set, which can be shown to converge to theoptimum of the relaxed optimization problem. The optimization may beperformed on each image, and may take, for example, only a fewmilliseconds to perform for images with thousands of labels.

As an example, an image X may contain multiple patches {x_(i)}_(i=1)^(M), which may be of varying size and position. A patch may be detectedby training a model based on a “window” (e.g., a small portion of animage). The model may provide a distribution probability over thepresence of possible objects. The model may then be applied to allpossible such windows in the image, at various size and positions.Windows with high scores may be identified and a corresponding positionof an object may be utilized. An option scoring function f(x_(i), y_(j))may attribute a score to a given label y_(j) for an image patch x_(i).The score may be generated based on any applicable option generationand/or scoring technique as disclosed herein. A relation functions(y_(j), y_(k)) as previously described may attribute a score to theexpected co-occurrence/consistency of two options y_(j) and y_(k) basedon co-occurrence of text corresponding to the options y_(j) and y_(k)within a text corpus. A relation score for more consistent options maybe higher than a score for less consistent options. For example,continuing the earlier example, the options ‘dolphin’ and ‘ocean’ mayhave a higher relation score than the options ‘dolphin’ and ‘Obama’,such that

s(dolphin, ocean)>s(dolphin, obama).

As another example, a graph may be constructed for each image X whereeach node n_(i) corresponds to a single pair (x,y) of a patch x andoption y. Here x(n_(i)) is the patch of node n_(i) and y(n_(i)) is anoption of node n_(i).

A function F(n_(i))=f(x(n_(i)), y(n_(i))) may be defined as the optionscore of the option for node n_(i) and S(n_(i), n_(j))=s(y(n_(i)),y(n_(j))) may be defined as the consistency between nodes n_(i) andn_(j). For tractability purposes, the graph can contain M×K nodes, whereM is the number of patches in image X and for each patch only the top Klabels returned by an image patch labeler are kept. Accordingly, aglobal sore may be calculated by:

${G\left( {X,\alpha} \right)} = {{\sum\limits_{i}{\alpha_{i}{F\left( n_{i} \right)}}} + {\sum\limits_{i,j}{\alpha_{i}\alpha_{j}{S\left( {n_{i},n_{j}} \right)}}}}$

Where the constraints are as follows:

${\forall{i\;:\alpha_{i}}} = \left\{ {{\begin{matrix}1 & {{if}\mspace{14mu} {the}\mspace{14mu} {{nod}e}\mspace{14mu} n_{i}\mspace{14mu} {is}\mspace{14mu} {in}\mspace{14mu} {the}\mspace{14mu} {set}} \\0 & {otherwise}\end{matrix}.{\forall{x \in {X:\mspace{11mu} \left( {\sum\limits_{{i:{x{(n_{i})}}} = x}\alpha_{i}} \right)}}}} = {{1{{And}\left( {\sum\limits_{i}\alpha_{i}} \right)}} \leq N}} \right.$

N corresponds to a hyper-parameter used to determine the size of thesubset of nodes with a consistency above a threshold such that

$\arg {\max\limits_{\alpha}{G\left( {X,\alpha} \right)}}$

where α defines a subset of N patches and their labels that is the mostconsistent. The global score maybe result in labeling node n_(i) basedboth on the option score F(n_(i)) as well as the relation score S(n_(i),n_(j)). The option y(n_(i)) may be designated as the label for noden_(i) if the global score exceeds a global score threshold. Essentially,the global score may be directly proportional the option score and therelation score such that either a high option score or a high relationscore may result in a high global score. Accordingly, either a highoption score or high relation score may result in designating an optionas the label for a node. As disclosed in more detail herein, a tradeoffweight between the two terms may also be applied when calculating G(X,α). The tradeoff term may enable weighing either the options scoreF(n_(i)) and the relation score S(n_(i), n_(j)) different from eachother,

In an illustrative example of the disclosed subject matter, as shown inFIG. 6a , an unlabeled image 600 may be provided. As shown in FIG. 6 b,the image 600 may be divided into multiple patches 602, 610, 620, 630,and 640. A first option, ‘Ocean’, associated with patch 602 may bereceived and may correspond to an option score of 0.4. Additionally, asecond option, ‘Door’, associated with patch 630 may be received. Arelation score may be generated for the first and options, ‘Ocean’ and‘Door’, as previously described. As a specific example, the relationscore may be 0.1, and may be based on the number of occurrences of theword ‘Ocean’ and the word ‘Door’ within text documents available on theinternet or other text corpus. The global score for the patch 602 andthe option, ‘Ocean’, may be based on the option score 0.4 and relationscore 0.1 and may be 0.5 based on adding the option score 0.4 andrelation score 0.1. Similarly, a third option, ‘Celling’, associatedwith patch 602 may be received and may correspond to an option score of0.35. Additionally, the second option, ‘Door’, associated with patch 630may be received. A relation score may be generated for the third option,‘Celling’, and the second option, ‘Door’, according to techniquesdisclosed herein. The relation score may be 0.45. The relation score maybe based on the number of occurrences of the word ‘Celling’ and the word“‘Door’ within text documents available on the internet or other textcorpus, as previously described. The global score for the patch 602 andthe option, ‘Ocean’, may be based on the option score 0.35 and relationscore 0.45, and may be 0.8 based on adding the option score 0.35 andrelation score 0.45. A global score threshold may be predetermined andmay be 0.7 such that the option, ‘Ocean’, is disqualified as a label forthe patch 602 and the option, ‘Celling’, is designated as the label forthe patch 602. Alternatively, the global scores for both options,‘Ocean’, and ‘Celling’, (0.5 and 0.8, respectively) may be compared andan option selected as the label based on the comparison. In thisexample, ‘Celling’ may be selected as a suitable label based on 0.8being larger than 0.5.

According to an implementation of the disclosed subject matter, aregularization component may be applied in addition to an option scoreand/or a relation score to designate an option as a label for an object.The regularization term may prevent overfitting and may be applied usingany applicable technique such as ridge regression, lasso, L²normalization, or the like. As an example, a vector of object scores maybe denoted by:

μ∈

^(p)

The value of the external field, μ_(j), increases with the likelihoodthat object j appears in an image. A matrix of co-occurrence statisticsor object pairwise relation may be denoted by

S∈

₊ ^(p×p)

As disclosed herein, the entries for this matrix may be non-negative.Additionally, domain constraints on the set of admissible solutions maybe added to extract semantics from the scores inferred for each labeland as an additional mechanism to guard against overfitting.Accordingly, the following vector may be generated:

α∈

^(p)

The vector α may be generated by minimizing

Q(α|μ, S)=E(α|μ)+λC(α|S)+ε

(α) s.t. α∈Ω,

where λ and ε are hyper-parameters to be selected on a separatedvalidation set. Conceptually, the first term ε(α/μ) measures theconformity of the inferred vector α to the external field μ such thatthis term corresponds to the option score for a potential option. Thesecond term λC(α|S) indicates the relation between two or more optionssuch that a higher relation corresponds to a higher likelihood that thetwo or more options are present in an image. The third term correspondsto a regularization component, such as 2-norm regularization such asR(α)=α^(T)α. The additional requirement that α∈Ω may be applied to finda small subset of the most relevant options such that:

$\Omega = \left\{ {{{\alpha \mspace{11mu} {s.t.{\sum\limits_{j}\alpha_{j}}}} \leq N},{{\alpha }_{\infty} \leq 1},{\forall_{j}{{\text{:}\mspace{11mu} \alpha_{j}} \geq 0}}} \right\}$

Accordingly, one or more regularization factors may be applied inaddition to an option score and relation score in order to generate alabel for an object within an image.

Implementations of the presently disclosed subject matter may beimplemented in and used with a variety of component and networkarchitectures. FIG. 1 is an example computer system 20 suitable forimplementing embodiments of the presently disclosed subject matter. Thecomputer 20 includes a bus 21 which interconnects major components ofthe computer 20, such as one or more processors 24, memory 27 such asRAM, ROM, flash RAM, or the like, an input/output controller 28, andfixed storage 23 such as a hard drive, flash storage, SAN device, or thelike. It will be understood that other components may or may not beincluded, such as a user display such as a display screen via a displayadapter, user input interfaces such as controllers and associated userinput devices such as a keyboard, mouse, touchscreen, or the like, andother components known in the art to use in or in conjunction withgeneral-purpose computing systems.

The bus 21 allows data communication between the central processor 24and the memory 27. The RAM is generally the main memory into which theoperating system and application programs are loaded. The ROM or flashmemory can contain, among other code, the Basic Input-Output system(BIOS) which controls basic hardware operation such as the interactionwith peripheral components. Applications resident with the computer 20are generally stored on and accessed via a computer readable medium,such as the fixed storage 23 and/or the memory 27, an optical drive,external storage mechanism, or the like.

Each component shown may be integral with the computer 20 or may beseparate and accessed through other interfaces. Other interfaces, suchas a network interface 29, may provide a connection to remote systemsand devices via a telephone link, wired or wireless local- or wide-areanetwork connection, proprietary network connections, or the like. Forexample, the network interface 29 may allow the computer to communicatewith other computers via one or more local, wide-area, or othernetworks, as shown in FIG. 2.

Many other devices or components (not shown) may be connected in asimilar manner, such as document scanners, digital cameras, auxiliary,supplemental, or backup systems, or the like. Conversely, all of thecomponents shown in FIG. 1 need not be present to practice the presentdisclosure. The components can be interconnected in different ways fromthat shown. The operation of a computer such as that shown in FIG. 1 isreadily known in the art and is not discussed in detail in thisapplication. Code to implement the present disclosure can be stored incomputer-readable storage media such as one or more of the memory 27,fixed storage 23, remote storage locations, or any other storagemechanism known in the art.

FIG. 2 shows an example arrangement according to an embodiment of thedisclosed subject matter. One or more clients 10, 11, such as localcomputers, smart phones, tablet computing devices, remote services, andthe like may connect to other devices via one or more networks 7. Thenetwork may be a local network, wide-area network, the Internet, or anyother suitable communication network or networks, and may be implementedon any suitable platform including wired and/or wireless networks. Theclients 10, 11 may communicate with one or more computer systems, suchas processing units 14, databases 15, and user interface systems 13. Insome cases, clients 10, 11 may communicate with a user interface system13, which may provide access to one or more other systems such as adatabase 15, a processing unit 14, or the like. For example, the userinterface 13 may be a user-accessible web page that provides data fromone or more other computer systems. The user interface 13 may providedifferent interfaces to different clients, such as where ahuman-readable web page is provided to web browser clients 10, and acomputer-readable API or other interface is provided to remote serviceclients 11. The user interface 13, database 15, and processing units 14may be part of an integral system, or may include multiple computersystems communicating via a private network, the Internet, or any othersuitable network. Processing units 14 may be, for example, part of adistributed system such as a cloud-based computing system, searchengine, content delivery system, or the like, which may also include orcommunicate with a database 15 and/or user interface 13. In somearrangements, an analysis system 5 may provide back-end processing, suchas where stored or acquired data is pre-processed by the analysis system5 before delivery to the processing unit 14, database 15, and/or userinterface 13. For example, a machine learning system 5 may providevarious prediction models, data analysis, or the like to one or moreother systems 13, 14, 15.

The foregoing description, for purpose of explanation, has beendescribed with reference to specific implementations. However, theillustrative discussions above are not intended to be exhaustive or tolimit implementations of the disclosed subject matter to the preciseforms disclosed. Many modifications and variations are possible in viewof the above teachings. The implementations were chosen and described inorder to explain the principles of implementations of the disclosedsubject matter and their practical applications, to thereby enableothers skilled in the art to utilize those implementations as well asvarious implementations with various modifications as may be suited tothe particular use contemplated.

1. A computer implemented method comprising: receiving a first optionfor a first patch within an image, the first option being a first textlabel, and the first patch being a first portion of an image depicting afirst object; receiving a second option for a second patch within theimage, the second option being a second text label, and the second patchbeing a second portion of the image depicting a second object;generating a first option score for the first patch, the first optionscore being indicative of a likelihood that the first text labelcorresponds to the first object generating a first relation score basedon the consistency between the first option and the second option, thefirst relation score based on a number of co-occurrences of the firsttext label and the second text label in text of a set of documents; andgenerating a first global score for the first patch based on the firstoption score and the first relation score.
 2. The method of claim 1,further comprising designating the first option as a label for the firstobject in the image if the global score exceeds a global scorethreshold.
 3. The method of claim 1, further comprising: receiving athird option for the first patch within an image; generating a secondoption score for a first patch; generating a second relation score basedon a number of co-occurrences of the second option and the third optionin text of a set of documents; generating a second global score for thefirst patch based on the third option score and the second relationscore; comparing the first global score to the second global score; anddesignating the first option as a label for the first object in theimage based on the first global score exceeding the second global score.4. A system comprising: a processor configured to: receive a firstoption for a first patch within an image, the first option being a firsttext label, and the first patch being a first portion of an imagedepicting a first object; receive a second option for a second patchwithin the image, the second option being a second text label, and thesecond patch being a second portion of the image depicting a secondobject; generate a first option score for the first patch, the firstoption score being indicative of the likelihood that the first textlabel corresponds to the first object; generate a first relation scorebased on the consistency between the first option and the second option,the first relation score based on a number of co-occurrences of thefirst text label and the second text label in text of a set ofdocuments; and generate a first global score for the first patch basedon the first option score and the first relation score.
 5. The system ofclaim 4, further configured to designate the first option as label forthe first object in the image if the global score exceeds a global scorethreshold.
 6. The system of claim 4, further configured to: receive athird option for the first patch within an image; generate a secondoption score for a first patch; generate a second relation score basedon a number of co-occurrences of the second option and the third optionin text of a set of documents; generate a second global score for thefirst patch based on the third option score and the second relationscore; compare the first global score to the second global score; anddesignate the first option as a label for the first object in the imagebased on the comparison based on the first global score exceeding thesecond global score.
 7. The method of claim 1, wherein the set ofdocuments are web pages.
 8. The method of claim 1, wherein first patchand the second patch partially overlap in the image.
 9. The method ofclaim 1, wherein the first patch and the second patch are separate fromeach other in the image.
 10. The method of claim 1, wherein generating afirst global score for the first patch based on the first option scoreand the first relation score comprises summing the first option scorewith the first relation score.
 11. The system of claim 4, wherein theset of documents are web pages.
 12. The system of claim 4, wherein firstpatch and the second patch partially overlap in the image.
 13. Thesystem of claim 4, wherein the first patch and the second patch areseparate from each other in the image.
 14. The system of claim 4,wherein generating a first global score for the first patch based on thefirst option score and the first relation score comprises summing thefirst option score with the first relation score.